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Ashes Profile – Alastair Cook

My 18 month old daughter thinks that he is the bloke that presents CBeebies and sometimes I think it is the bloke from CBeebies who opens the batting for England.

There is always one of these sort of blokes everywhere, the one who you can’t understand why they are where they are. It dosen’t matter whether it is in work or sport, they are there.

How does that bloke keep his job? Or his place in the team? Is he a distant relative of the boss? Cos if I was that bad, I’d be long gone by now. Is he the son-in-law? Or does he have a photo of his boss in a compromising position on Clapham Common?

England’s version of that bloke is Alastair Cook. How this man has not been dropped over the last 2-3 years is a total mystery to me. It’s fair to say that Cook is another one of those England players to benefit from the patience of the selectors.

He always makes the same mistakes time after time, all his dismissals are the bloody same. I drive for a living and generally listen to TMS. Every time Cook is dismissed I can picture it in my head, I don’t need to watch it on the tele when I get home because in my mind I can already see what he’s done.

And when I do watch it, yes, it is exactly as I suspected.

If ever there was a batting analogy of Shane Warne’s ‘he’s played 1 test 33 times’ theory, then surely Cook is it.

But he is one of those players who somehow hangs in there, continually just doing enough as opposed to someone who excels. He always seems to be half asleep in the field too, the match winning half chances are rarely taken.

Believe it or not, I’m not a hater of Cook, I just think he has got away with things a bit too much. This isn’t just a unsubstansiated rant towards him, I generally feel that Cook has not progressed for 2-3 years now, in fact I’d say he has gone backwards.

Another thing that annoys me about him is he’s not slow on giving an opinion to the media, he talks an absolutely brilliant game. I just end up thinking to myself ‘why don’t you just shut up and let your batting do the talking’. (I suppose the answers obvious)

He averages just 26.21 against Australia which is truely aweful, against Bangladesh it is 66.83 and West Indies 61.93. People used to say Matthew Hayden was a flat track bully, next to Cook he must look like Bradman.

In fairness to Cook, his average is a respectable 45.30 against Sri Lanka, 44.00 against SA, 40.53 against India and 30.80 against New Zealand, so only the Kiwi average is letting him down there.

He showed great temperament when he first got into the side, thats probably part of the reason he keeps his place, that and the fact he’s pencilled in as the next captain (please no). He sounds like a real tryer as well.

He also played a very gutsy innings against Pakistan to (alledgedly) save his place, but it typified everything that is wrong with English sport in general, we only seem to pull a performance out of the bag at the last minute to save our skin.

Aussies see him as a major weak link and I hope I’m proved wrong. This could cost England in this series if he becomes a walking wicket and the selectors refuse to give him the boot.

I know this write up seems very neagative, I will be only too happy to write an apology on here and say I got things wrong if Cook has a successful series – and I really hope I have the need to do so.

But if he fails again surely it is time to have a look at someone else.

Cook is 5th favourite in the betting be top English batsman at a best price of 6/1 with Bet365, quite frankly, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge poll.

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1 Comment

  1. Anonymous

    Would you touch it with a barge pole now?

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